D, CF & Me

This post was originally posted on my Instagram on March 17th, 2016. @shannonjamesphotography / Instagram, 2016 If you were sat in one of these seats and a young person, maybe a teenager coming home from school, asks to sit down, would you get up if it looked as if there was nothing wrong with them?  You said "No."  Am I wrong? Most people will say no because their definition of "disabled" means being in a wheelchair or being physically or mentally stopped in some way. A disability isn't something that you can see sometimes.  There are many disabilities where the only hint of anything wrong will be absolutely tiny. I have two "invisible illnesses." I have Cystic Fibrosis and Diabetes. I would be more than happy to guess that if I was stood up on the bus with no seats anywhere, I wouldn't be offered the seat. If I asked, the person already sat down would probably say no.  Just because you can't see that someone is disabled, doesn...

"What do you struggle with most?"                      Knowing that my life will be a lot shorter than my friends, they all know this though I'm not sure it's truly sunk in for them that I will likely die young as I've been fairly healthy since I've known most of them. It kind of scares me to have these relationships because I don't want too many people to be there when I die. That's scary. "What do you wish everyone knew about CF?"                      That it's not just a cough. I'm tired all the time and I have no energy some days. Hospital clinics are the worst. People always assume that clinic isn't bad but I've always hated it. "What misconceptions do people have about CF?"                      That it's not very serious. This is usually because they've never heard of it. "What causes CF?"     ...